Iris assists with intake. It doesn't create an attorney-client relationship.
The privilege question, answered plainly, including the parts that depend on your jurisdiction, which we won't pretend to answer for you.
What Iris does.
Iris collects information from prospective clients on the firm's behalf, before anyone, on either side, has decided whether there will be an engagement. It gathers facts: what happened, when, who was involved, what's been done since.
That's the whole job. Iris doesn't evaluate the facts, doesn't advise the caller, and says so at the start of every conversation: it is the firm's intake agent, not an attorney.
The privilege question.
Attorney-client privilege protects communications between a lawyer and a client, made for the purpose of legal advice. During an Iris conversation, that relationship doesn't exist yet. A person is telling a firm's intake agent what happened, not asking an attorney for counsel. In the ordinary case, privilege does not attach to what they say.
Confidentiality is a broader thing than privilege, and this is where it gets interesting. Many jurisdictions impose duties toward prospective clients, under rules like ABA Model Rule 1.18, such that information a person shares while seeking representation can remain confidential even if no engagement follows. The conversation may not be privileged. It is still not nothing.
What that means for a given intake flow depends on your state's rules and your firm's practice. That is the honest boundary of this page: not to answer the question for you, but to make sure it gets asked.
The disclosure, verbatim.
Not summarized, not paraphrased. The exact words a caller meets at the start of every conversation. Transparency about what Iris is, before a single fact is shared.
English
You've reached [Firm name]. I'm Iris, the firm's intake agent. I'm not an attorney, and this conversation doesn't create an attorney-client relationship or provide legal advice. What you share here goes to the firm's attorneys so they can follow up with you directly.
Español
Ha contactado a [Firm name]. Soy Iris, el asistente de admisión de la firma. No soy abogada, y esta conversación no crea una relación abogado-cliente ni constituye asesoría legal. Lo que comparta aquí llegará a los abogados de la firma para que puedan comunicarse con usted directamente.
The wording is editable per firm. The setting is binary, and the default is on: Iris never implies the caller is speaking with an attorney, or receiving advice, in either language.
Recommended practice.
Three steps. The first is a setting; the other two belong to the firm.
This page is information, not legal advice.
It describes how Iris is designed. Oculon doesn't practice law, and nothing here is a substitute for it. For your jurisdiction, the authorities are your ethics counsel and your state bar's guidance, in that order.
Ethics questions, asked plainly.
We can't advise, but we can answer how the system behaves, what a caller sees, what gets stored, what the record contains. The bar-compliance page covers the same ground from the ethics-rules angle, and the confidentiality commitments cover what happens to it afterward.